Dakota Beacon

Thursday, December 20, 2018

It is Christmas time. Most of us spend as much of this season as we can with those we love - family, friends. We often travel a thousand miles just to be with them at this special time of year. If we can’t do that we phone them and send cards, letters and presents to keep in touch with them. We all take a moment in December to remember what really counts and also to count our blessings, including the all-important one of freedom. Freedom just to be with our families.

Iti is not this way everywhere or for everyone. At Christmas time we also are called upon by charities, by our churches and others to give, to help others who do not have the prosperity we do or the freedom. This year I am asking you to call on your Congressmen and Senators and your other civic leaders to call on President Trump to offer asylum to Asia Bibi.

This won’t cost you a cent, but it might mean the difference of life or death to this Christian woman. Her only crimes were to a) be a Christian in the Islamic state of Pakistan, and b) to offer a cup of water to a Muslim woman. For these unspeakable crimes she has spent the last 8 years in prison, away from her children and her husband, under threat of execution. She was sentenced to death, you see, for these crimes.

Only a few weeks ago, Asia Bibi won an appeal. The charges were dropped and this once-young mother should have been free to return to the arms of her husband and her children. But no. They must all live another chapter of horror, as mobs in the streets go door to door to seek her and murder her. Already others who have defended her have been murdered in Pakistan. Her family as sought asylum in Britain. It was no surprise that the corrupt and cowardly government of Teresa May turned them down. They have sought asylum in the Vatican. But there is a Pope there who thinks that Christians murdered by Muslims are a “testiment to God’s plan for peaceful co-existence” (in other words, he’s mad); hence no help was provided there. Today we see this is official: “Vatican Refuses to Offer Asylum to Asia Bibi”

Our President has worked hard to give us the impression that he won’t be bullied by the press, by Congress, by anyone. He says he is his own man. Let’s urge him to give us real proof of this. Let him be the man with the courage to offer this innocent woman and her suffering family, who have lost eight years of their lives together already and know the hardship and terror of living under threat of excecution, asylum in America, and all that this entails in terms of freedom to live without fear. No one is looking for a handout, no one wants your money - just the result of an act of good conscience and the courage to stand up for the innocent who suffer.

If this is not the message of Christmas we should put away the glittery deccorations and leave the tree in the forest where it belongs and stay home from church. We should hunker down and wait for this to come to us. I think we are better than that. I have already called my Congressman and one other, and a U.S. Senator and asked them to go to the President with this humane request - ASYLUM FOR ASIA BIBI AND HER FAMILY FOR CHRISTMAS.

A President who pardons a Thanksgiving turkey with all the ceremony and pomp and circumstance of a state occasion should step up to the plate this Christmas and tell Asia Bibi’s family and the world that America still stands for freedom and will defend it and that we actually are better than the government of Pakistan.

I ask you today to take a moment to pray for Asia Bibi and her family and do something more - write, email, phone you representatives in Washington and call on them to bring this woman and her husband and children to freedom in America. We can’t promise wealth, we can’t even promise absolute safety to anyone, but we surely can offer freedom to an innocent person.

The phone number for the Congressional switchboard is 202-224-3122. Don’t wait. Call now! Or tomorrow’s headline might be something you don’t want on your consceince.

PLEASE SHARE THIS WITH ALL OF YOUR CONTACTS!

Merry Christmas to everyone and a prayer for a very happy, productive, plentiful and blessed New Year!